swampsheep wrote:When in the "ground combat step" is the firing of the orbital guns and defence weapons taking place? Before movement? In the "resolve combat" step - and in that case, after or before the combat itself?I would think it makes sense to shoot them before moving tropps so that it is the holding of sectors before the ground combat starts, the decides if you can fire a weapon.

You are right. It happens first.P74 "At the beginning of the ground combat step"P39 "Ground Combat. Resolve any ground asset movements... ->P55 and following-> Ground combat activation P58 1.) Initiative 2.) Movement and so on.The only thing that is debateable is how initiative concerning the shooting is handled as RAW it happens before initiative deterimnation but that can be solved by common sense I guess.

But I don't think the rules are clear on this. What is "the ground combat step". Is that the entire thing around what is happening on the ground or is it only the subsequent step in which fighting is taking place? They don't use the same terms.

P39 is quite clear in stating what ground combat and thus the ground combat step is inside a turn and includes all phases written down on P58 so shooting happens before all those steps inside the Ground Combat Step. Imho there is nothing to discuss about that besides the initiative thing for shooting of course if we take it completel RAW. I agree that the page hopping is kinda confusing but I would not call it unclear (besides if you want to jump onto "step" missing in the P39 sequence of action... which is, in this case, nitpicking imho.)

Shikatanai wrote:I agree that it could be more clear / better written but I think when combining the pages I mentioned above the only viable conclusion is shooting before movement - no evidence for anything else imho.

Can the weapons in the Military and Orbital Gun sectors target ships in atmosphere? I'm asking because both weapons have the "espace velocity", which specifically states "they must always target an enemy in a higher Orbital Layer than themselves". The weapons are on the ground, which technically is part of the atmosphere layer, but IMHO such rule makes little sense for a weapon in the ground. It also leaves ground troops/sectors defenseless against strike carriers dropping forces from atmosphere or ships bombarding from atmosphere layer.

Sectors can only be targeted by ships in Low Orbit and follow the normal rules for being in Atmosphere

Escape Velocity pg 69:

...However, they must always target an enemy in a higher Orbital Layer than themselves.

The Bombardment rules establish that sectors are considered in the Atmosphere, and Escape Velocity states that it always has to fire at a higher atmospheric level. It could be explained as firing at something too close risks damaging the weapon itself (falling debris, explosions, feedback, whatever).

The game establishes there are 3 layers: Atmosphere, Low Orbit, High Orbit.There is no ground layer (besides one misleading image in the book).This means you can only target Low and High Orbit with sector weaponry.